Stoppard's Theatre: Finding Order amid Chaos

Synopsis

With a thirty-year run of award-winning, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful plays, fromRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1967) toThe Invention of Love(1997), Tom Stoppard is arguably the preeminent playwright in Britain today. His popularity also extends to the United States, where his plays have won three Tony awards and his screenplay forShakespeare in Lovewon the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

John Fleming offers the first book-length assessment of Stoppard's work in nearly a decade. He takes an in-depth look at the three newest plays (Arcadia,Indian Ink,andThe Invention of Love)and the recently revised versions ofTravestiesandHapgood, as well as at four other major plays (Rosencrantz,Jumpers,Night and Day,andThe Real Thing). Drawing on Stoppard's personal papers at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC), Fleming also examines Stoppard's previously unknown playGalileo,as well as numerous unpublished scripts and variant texts of his published plays.

Fleming also mines Stoppard's papers for a fuller, more detailed overview of the evolution of his plays. By considering Stoppard's personal views (from both his correspondence and interviews) and by examining his career from his earliest scripts and productions through his most recent, this book provides all that is essential for understanding and appreciating one of the most complex and distinctive playwrights of our time.